Sport in Iceland
Encyclopedia
Team handball
Handball is a team sport in which two teams of seven players each pass a ball to throw it into the goal of the other team...
, football, athletics, basketball
Basketball
Basketball is a team sport in which two teams of five players try to score points by throwing or "shooting" a ball through the top of a basketball hoop while following a set of rules...
, golf
Golf
Golf is a precision club and ball sport, in which competing players use many types of clubs to hit balls into a series of holes on a golf course using the fewest number of strokes....
, volleyball
Volleyball
Volleyball is a team sport in which two teams of six players are separated by a net. Each team tries to score points by grounding a ball on the other team's court under organized rules.The complete rules are extensive...
, tennis
Tennis
Tennis is a sport usually played between two players or between two teams of two players each . Each player uses a racket that is strung to strike a hollow rubber ball covered with felt over a net into the opponent's court. Tennis is an Olympic sport and is played at all levels of society at all...
, swimming
Swimming (sport)
Swimming is a sport governed by the Fédération Internationale de Natation .-History: Competitive swimming in Europe began around 1800 BCE, mostly in the form of the freestyle. In 1873 Steve Bowyer introduced the trudgen to Western swimming competitions, after copying the front crawl used by Native...
, and chess
Chess
Chess is a two-player board game played on a chessboard, a square-checkered board with 64 squares arranged in an eight-by-eight grid. It is one of the world's most popular games, played by millions of people worldwide at home, in clubs, online, by correspondence, and in tournaments.Each player...
; horseback riding on Icelandic horse
Icelandic horse
The Icelandic horse is a breed of horse developed in Iceland. Although the horses are small, at times pony-sized, most registries for the Icelandic refer to it as a horse. Icelandic horses are long-lived and hardy. In their native country they have few diseases; Icelandic law prevents horses from...
s is also popular.
Team handball
Team handball
Handball is a team sport in which two teams of seven players each pass a ball to throw it into the goal of the other team...
is often referred to as a national sport. Iceland's team
Iceland national handball team
The Iceland national handball team is the national handball team of Iceland and is controlled by the Icelandic Handball Association.- World Championships :- European Championships :- Olympic games :- Current squad :...
is one of the top ranked teams in the world, recently winning the silver medal at the 2008 Summer Olympics
2008 Summer Olympics
The 2008 Summer Olympics, officially known as the Games of the XXIX Olympiad, was a major international multi-sport event that took place in Beijing, China, from August 8 to August 24, 2008. A total of 11,028 athletes from 204 National Olympic Committees competed in 28 sports and 302 events...
in Beijing, China, and a bronze medal in the 2010 European Championship
2010 European Men's Handball Championship
The 2010 EHF European Men's Handball Championship was held in Austria from 19–31 January, in the cities of Vienna, Graz, Innsbruck, Linz and Wiener Neustadt.-Venues:...
. Icelandic women are good at football
Football (soccer)
Association football, more commonly known as football or soccer, is a sport played between two teams of eleven players with a spherical ball...
, the national team being ranked eighteenth by FIFA
FIFA
The Fédération Internationale de Football Association , commonly known by the acronym FIFA , is the international governing body of :association football, futsal and beach football. Its headquarters are located in Zurich, Switzerland, and its president is Sepp Blatter, who is in his fourth...
.
The country's chess clubs have created many chess Grandmasters including Friðrik Ólafsson
Friðrik Ólafsson
Friðrik Ólafsson is an Icelandic chess Grandmaster and former president of FIDE.Friðrik was born in Reykjavík, Iceland. A first-time winner of the Icelandic Championship in 1952 and of the Scandinavian Championship a year later, he rapidly became recognised as the strongest Icelandic player of his...
, Jóhann Hjartarson
Johann Hjartarson
Jóhann Hjartarson is a chess Grandmaster from Iceland. He earned the International Master title in 1984 and the Grandmaster title a year later. Among his best international tournament results are equal fourth at Reykjavik 1988 , equal third at Tilburg 1988 and sixth at Belgrade 1989...
, Margeir Pétursson, and Jón Loftur Árnason, and Golf
Golf
Golf is a precision club and ball sport, in which competing players use many types of clubs to hit balls into a series of holes on a golf course using the fewest number of strokes....
is especially common (around 1 in 8 Icelanders play), but the oldest sport association in Iceland is the Reykjavik Shooting Association, founded 1867. Rifle shooting became very popular in the 19th century and was heavily encouraged by politicians and others pushing for Icelandic independence. Shooting
Shooting
Shooting is the act or process of firing rifles, shotguns or other projectile weapons such as bows or crossbows. Even the firing of artillery, rockets and missiles can be called shooting. A person who specializes in shooting is a marksman...
remains popular and all types of shooting with small arms practiced in the country.
Icelanders are famous for their immense strength. Strength athletics and powerlifting have been Iceland's greatest success in sports on an international level. In the World's Strongest Man
World's Strongest Man
The World's Strongest Man is a well recognised event in strength athletics and has been described by a number of highly respected authorities in the sport as the premier event in strongman. Organized by TWI, an IMG Media company, it is broadcast around the end of December each year...
competition, Iceland is ranked the number 1 nation with 8 finishes in 1st place (Magnús Ver Magnússon
Magnús Ver Magnússon
Magnús Ver Magnússon is a former powerlifter and strongman competitor from Egilsstaðir, Iceland. Magnus won the title of World's Strongest Man four times ....
and Jón Páll Sigmarsson
Jón Páll Sigmarsson
Jón Páll Sigmarsson was a strongman, a powerlifter , and a bodybuilder from Iceland who won the World's Strongest Man Competition four times . In 1984 Jón won the Icelandic bodybuilding title in the +90 kg. class...
with four victories each), and numerous 2nd and 3rd placings. In powerlifting, Benedikt Magnússon
Benedikt Magnússon
Benedikt Magnússon , known by his nickname "Benni", is a strongman and powerlifter from Iceland.-Strongman and powerlifting:...
placed the world record deadlift, of 445 kg, at the early age of 20. He recently set the world record of 1100lbs for the tire deadlift. Glíma
Glima
Glíma is the Icelandic national style of folk wrestling.There are four points that differentiate it from other forms of wrestling:*The opponents must always stand erect.*The opponents step clockwise around each other...
is a form of wrestling, thought to have originated with Vikings, that is still played in Iceland.
Ice and rock climbing are a favorite among many Icelanders; climbing the 4,167-foot (1,270 metre) Þumall peak in Skaftafell National Park
Skaftafell National Park
Skaftafell National Park was a national park, situated between Kirkjubæjarklaustur, typically referred to as Klaustur, and Höfn in the south of Iceland. On 7 June 2008, it became a part of the larger Vatnajökull National Park....
is a challenge for many adventurous climbers, but mountain climbing is considered to be suitable for the general public and is a very common type of leisure activity. Hvítá
Hvítá
Hvítá is a river whose source is in the glacier lake Hvítárvatn at Langjökull glacier in the highlands of Iceland at . The river flows for 40 km before dropping down into a narrow gorge at the waterfall Gullfoss....
, among many other of the Icelandic glacial rivers, attracts kayakers and river rafters worldwide.
Ice hockey is gaining popularity in Iceland, with 1 in 512 of the population an ice hockey player. They have a larger 'hockey density' than Slovakia (1 in 630 people are players). The Iceland national ice hockey team
Iceland national ice hockey team
The Icelandic men's national ice hockey team is a member of the International Ice Hockey Federation. Iceland is ranked 38th in the world by the IIHF World Rankings as of 2008.-Roster:From the 2010 Men's World Ice Hockey Championships...
has risen to 38th in the IIHF rankings, and has recently seen a fourth team added to their domestic league.
Iceland's most famous athlete comes from the world of football. Eiður Guðjohnsen
Eiður Guðjohnsen
Eiður Smári Guðjohnsen is an Icelandic footballer who currently plays for AEK Athens F.C. in the Superleague Greece. He has previously played for Premier League club Chelsea and FC Barcelona of Spain, having made his name with Bolton Wanderers. He was the captain of the Iceland national team until...
has played in England's Premier League for Chelsea, winning the league title twice, he also played in La Liga
La Liga
The Primera División of the Liga Nacional de Fútbol Profesional , commonly known as La Liga or, for sponsorship reasons, Liga BBVA since 2008, is the top professional association football division of the Spanish football league system...
(Spanish Premier League) for FC Barcelona
FC Barcelona
Futbol Club Barcelona , also known as Barcelona and familiarly as Barça, is a professional football club, based in Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain....
, he currently plays for Stoke City.
In 1991, Iceland were crowned world contract bridge
Contract bridge
Contract bridge, usually known simply as bridge, is a trick-taking card game using a standard deck of 52 playing cards played by four players in two competing partnerships with partners sitting opposite each other around a small table...
champions, when they won the Bermuda Bowl
Bermuda Bowl
The Bermuda Bowl is a trophy awarded to the winners of the Open series in the World Team Championship in contract bridge and is named for the site of the inaugural tournament held in 1950...
in Yokohama
Yokohama
is the capital city of Kanagawa Prefecture and the second largest city in Japan by population after Tokyo and most populous municipality of Japan. It lies on Tokyo Bay, south of Tokyo, in the Kantō region of the main island of Honshu...
, Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
.